Emotional Boundaries: Learning to Stop Being the Punching Bag
I hung up the phone this morning and all I could think was:
This is what emotional and mental mistreatment can feel like.
This is how people can spend years in unhealthy patterns and relationships and somehow walk away from an interaction thinking, That was my fault.
Was there a miscommunication?
Yes.
Does that excuse how someone chooses to speak to you?
No.
And that’s one of the things I’ve been learning about emotional and mental mistreatment.
It can be sneaky.
It’s not always screaming, name-calling, or something another person would immediately recognize as unhealthy.
Sometimes it’s subtle.
You find yourself continually making excuses for someone’s behavior.
You replay conversations over and over, trying to figure out what you did wrong.
You start questioning what you heard, how you said something, or whether maybe you really are the problem.
Slowly, you take on more and more responsibility for interactions that require two people.
And somewhere along the way, you can lose sight of where your responsibility ends and someone else’s begins.
Awareness Is Not Blame
This isn’t a story about diagnosing someone or labeling a relationship.
It’s a story about awareness.
I’ve known for years that a large portion of my childhood was spent in an emotionally and mentally unsettled household.
I was loved.
And I still love my family deeply.
But that doesn’t mean everything was healthy or that it always felt safe.
Both things can be true.
I began understanding some of this early in adulthood as I started peeling back the layers of why I fell into unhealthy patterns and what triggered some of my own struggles along the way.
I don’t have institutional authority or professional credentials on this subject.
What I do have is a lifetime of experience working through my own stuff.
And one thing I’ve learned is that anything you’re trying to unlearn, overcome, let go of, or even simply understand rarely disappears overnight.
You can pray for something to be removed from your life.
And maybe it is.
But I’ve found that even when the thing itself is gone, the residuals can remain.
The reactions.
The thought patterns.
The triggers.
The stories you’ve learned to tell yourself.
Those things can still require attention, work, effort, prayer, forgiveness, and a whole lot of undoing.
That’s where awareness becomes so important.
Because awareness isn’t blame.
Blame Can Keep You Stuck
I actually believe blame can become one of the biggest roadblocks to healing.
There is a difference between acknowledging what happened to you and deciding that what happened to you gets to control the rest of your life.
Blame keeps you looking backward.
Awareness helps you understand what happened so you can decide what happens next.
And that’s a powerful distinction.
You can recognize that something affected you without allowing it to define you.
You can acknowledge that someone hurt you without making their behavior the center of your entire life.
You can understand where a pattern came from while still deciding that the pattern stops with you.
That doesn’t mean it’s easy.
It means you’re becoming aware.
Learning What a Boundary Actually Is
At some point several years ago, I realized I needed to slide to the other side of the table.
I started learning about boundaries.
Nothing like being a thirty-something adult trying to figure out what the hell a boundary actually is.
How do you set one?
How do you say one?
How do you hold one?
And perhaps even more importantly, how do you understand one?
I’ve also become accustomed to some pretty deep self-reflection.
Sometimes too much.
There are moments when I need to call a timeout on myself because I can analyze an interaction so deeply that I end up turning everything back onto me.
And that’s an important lesson too.
Self-reflection is healthy. Self-blame is not the same thing.
Taking responsibility for your behavior doesn’t mean taking responsibility for someone else’s.
You can ask yourself:
Did I contribute to this?
Was there something I could have handled differently?
Do I owe someone an apology?
Those are healthy questions.
But you can also ask:
Am I taking responsibility for something that isn’t mine?
That’s where boundaries begin to matter.
The Moment I Realized I Didn’t Need to Defend Myself
Which brings me back to this morning.
“Hello?”
Long pause.
Nothing.
A little louder:
“What’s up?”
Then suddenly I’m being told, in a raised voice, to stop yelling.
Ummm…
You called me.
I calmly but firmly ended the conversation and asked the other person to call me back when they were ready to speak to me calmly and respectfully.
The phone rang again.
I answered.
The conversation quickly returned to how I had supposedly been yelling.
My first instinct was to defend myself.
To explain.
To prove that wasn’t what happened.
Then I remembered something from church the day before.
It was about being a peacemaker and recognizing that sometimes our need to be right does nothing more than feed our ego.
So I dropped it.
I didn’t agree.
I didn’t admit to something I didn’t believe happened.
I simply decided that I didn’t need to convince the other person that my version was the right one.
There is a difference.
You Don’t Always Have to Prove Your Version
That moment taught me something.
What the conversation was actually about doesn’t matter nearly as much as what happened inside of me afterward.
It was almost like I was watching myself have the conversation.
I was listening to myself listening.
And I noticed something.
I wasn’t reacting the way I used to.
I got off the phone and cried.
Don’t feel bad for me.
I wasn’t crying because I felt sorry for myself.
I cried because I’m tired of being treated this way.
And maybe that’s what boundaries eventually become.
Not punishment.
Not revenge.
Not cutting people off simply because they upset you.
Sometimes boundaries are simply reaching a place where you can love someone and simultaneously decide that you will no longer volunteer to be the punching bag for the parts of themselves they haven’t dealt with.
Someone Can Love You and Still Hurt You
Here’s another hard thing I’ve learned.
Someone can love you and still have absolutely no idea how to share love, speak in love, or offer love in a healthy way.
Maybe they were caught in a loop much like you were.
Maybe nobody ever showed them another way.
Maybe they never recognized it.
Maybe they did and don’t want to change it.
I don’t know.
And I’m learning that I don’t need to know.
Their healing is not my responsibility.
But my participation is.
That’s where boundaries become powerful.
You can’t control whether someone changes.
You can’t make someone recognize their behavior.
You can’t force someone to communicate differently.
But you can decide what you will participate in.
Walking Away Isn’t Always the Answer
Some of you reading this are probably thinking:
Hope, just walk away. It’s not worth it.
And sometimes, absolutely.
There are situations where distance and safety need to come first.
But I don’t believe walking away is always the answer.
Sometimes the work is learning how to remain connected without continuing to participate in the same unhealthy pattern.
In this particular situation, walking away isn’t the choice I want to make.
Learning not to be a punching bag is.
Holding boundaries is.
Holding others accountable while continuing to hold myself accountable is.
And perhaps most importantly, working like hell to stop my own mind from twisting everything up inside of me until I’ve somehow convinced myself that I am always the problem.
Accountability Still Matters
Am I perfect?
Absolutely not.
Do I get it right all the time?
Nope.
Have I made mistakes?
A shit ton.
Have I spoken to people in ways I regret?
Yes.
But I’ve tried to learn from it.
I’ve sought to grow.
I’ve tried to change.
I’ve apologized when needed.
I’ve tried to become a better version of myself than I was yesterday.
That’s the difference I’m trying to focus on.
Boundaries aren’t about pretending you’re perfect.
They’re about being willing to hold yourself accountable without taking responsibility for everything someone else does.
You can own your mistakes without owning someone else’s behavior.
The “After Wave” Can Be Just as Exhausting
Right now, one of the hardest things I’m working on is not getting pulled into what I call the after wave.
You know the one.
The interaction happens.
Then the other person immediately starts telling everyone around them their version of the story.
Maybe it’s to justify what happened.
Maybe it’s to feel better about themselves.
Maybe they genuinely experienced the situation differently.
Whatever the reason, suddenly you feel this overwhelming need to run around correcting the record.
“That’s not what happened!”
“That’s not what I said!”
“You’re not hearing the whole story!”
I’ve done that.
I’ve exhausted myself trying to repaint a picture someone else painted of me.
And I’m learning to stop.
Breathe.
Let it happen.
Let their version exist.
Let the cards fall where they fall.
Because I know who I am.
I know what I said.
I know what I’m working on.
I know where I’ve screwed up.
And I know where I’ve grown.
You Don’t Have to Correct Every Story About You
Many of us have experienced something similar.
Someone painted a picture of you using the wrong brushes and the wrong paint, and everything inside you wanted to grab the brush out of their hand and fix it.
I’ve had that happen more than once over the years.
I’ve even had relationships change or disappear because of someone else’s version of me.
That hurts.
But I’ve learned that sometimes you have to let their paint dry and leave the picture hanging exactly as they painted it.
You don’t have to keep painting over it.
You don’t have to convince everyone.
You don’t have to chase people down and make them understand.
You can move forward.
You can let go.
You can continue to self-reflect.
You can hold yourself accountable.
You can apologize when you need to.
You can hold your boundaries when you need to.
And you can learn whatever you can from the gift of a really shitty situation.
Your Healing Doesn’t Require Everyone to Understand You
Maybe the goal isn’t to make sure everyone understands your side.
Maybe the goal is to understand yourself well enough that someone else’s version of you no longer determines who you believe you are.
That’s a different kind of freedom.
It doesn’t mean you don’t care.
It doesn’t mean you don’t acknowledge mistakes.
It doesn’t mean you stop growing.
It means you stop handing other people the authority to define you.
You know yourself.
You know what you’re working on.
You know where you’ve grown.
You know where you still have work to do.
And you can continue doing that work without constantly defending your character.
Maybe This Is How the Loop Stops
Sometimes healing isn’t about getting the other person to change.
Sometimes it’s about changing your participation in the pattern.
You recognize the trigger.
You notice your reaction.
You pause.
You choose a different response.
You establish a boundary.
You take responsibility for your part.
And you release what isn’t yours.
The other person may never understand.
They may never apologize.
They may tell the story differently.
They may continue doing exactly what they’ve always done.
But you don’t have to continue being the same person inside the cycle.
The loop can stop with you.
Not because the other person changed.
Because you did.
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